View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sydney eScholarship 1 INTRODUCTION The Hyde Park Barracks is a landmark building of a joint investigation between the Historic Houses early colonial Sydney. Best known for its fine Georgian Trust (HHT) of New South Wales, the Archaeology architecture and its association with convicts, the Program at La Trobe University and the Australian Barracks has a complex history of occupation and Research Council (Crook et al. 2003). This work modification, and a rich archaeological legacy. It identified the great potential of the collection, and is the Barracks’ archaeological collection that is an adjunct project was launched in partnership with the focus of this book. When the last convicts were the Historic Houses Trust to expand and upgrade removed in 1848, the building entered a new phase, the original artefact catalogues. The result was the becoming, among other things, an Immigration first substantive monograph on the Barracks to Depot for young female migrants arriving from describe the archaeology of the underfloor collection the United Kingdom, and from 1862, an Asylum and place it within the context of archaeologies of for infirm and destitute women. These two groups the 19th century, institutionalisation, consumption of women occupied the Barracks until 1886, and and migration (Crook and Murray 2006). In 2008 over the years they lost, discarded and sometimes Davies and Murray began further work to complete concealed large quantities of debris and personal the re-cataloguing and contextual analysis of items in subfloor cavities. This material includes an artefacts, and create a consistent database for the extensive array of sewing equipment, clothing pieces, underfloor collection. religious items, medicinal bottles, and literally Our aim in this book is to build on Crook thousands of textile offcuts and paper scraps, and Murray’s previous work and to present a along with numerous other objects. These artefacts detailed account of the archaeological material provide a unique opportunity to explore the lives of and its many meanings within the context of an these women and their place in Australian society. archaeology of refuge. The unusual nature of the The assemblage recovered from the Hyde Park assemblage, however, requires a novel approach, Barracks is significant as one of the largest, most with large quantities of items rarely encountered comprehensive and best preserved archaeological in conventional archaeological contexts here taking assemblages derived from any 19th-century centre stage. For this reason our approach is a institution anywhere in the world. The bulk of the holistic one, integrating empirical data about the collection was excavated in 1980 and 1981, with artefacts with interpretations of spatial context around 70% coming from underfloor spaces of the and historical evidence about the Barracks complex main building and dating to the Depot and Asylum and its various occupants. Our focus is primarily period (1848–1886). The collection has the capacity on the underfloor collection, that is, material to tell us much about the history of women in the recovered from subfloor cavities on Levels 2 and 3 19th century, specifically in relation to destitute of the main building, for what it reveals about the asylums and their English counterparts — the lives, relationships and experiences of institutional workhouse — and, to a lesser extent, the experience women in 19th-century Sydney. of female immigration in the mid-19th century. The collection has been the focus of dozens of THE HYDE PARK BARRACKS: A BRIEF HISTORY archaeological studies since its recovery three decades ago, but many of these have struggled The Hyde Park Barracks was built under instruction to come to terms with the size, complexity and from Governor Lachlan Macquarie between 1817 meanings of the material. In 2001 the underfloor and 1819 to provide secure accommodation for male collection became the focus of a detailed government-assigned convicts who, until that time, archaeological assessment as part of the Exploring roamed Sydney’s streets after their day’s work and the Archaeology of the Modern City (EAMC) project, were responsible for their own lodgings.1 Macquarie 1 The first convict barracks in Australia was the Castle Hill Government Farm, built at Baulkham Hills near Parramatta in 1803. Excavation of the site in 2005 revealed the foundations of a large stone building, but little in the way of associated artefacts (Wilson and Douglas 2005). Following the Castle Hill uprising in 1804, when a group of mainly Irish convicts rebelled unsuccessfully against the authorities, no further convict barracks were built until 1817, when construction of the Hyde Park Barracks commenced. Around 1819, the Carters’ Barracks, at the south end of George Street, were also built to lodge convicts, with up to 180 men employed at making and hauling bricks. Two treadmills were installed in the complex by 1824 (Evans 1983:96–97; Hirst 1983:63; Kerr 1984:53; Macquarie 1925 [1822]:686). 1 1. Introduction oven cells cells N Deputy Superintendent privies privies mess room kitchen mess room 0 5 10 m Figure 1.1: Plan of Hyde Park Barracks, adapted from Freycinet’s 1819 plan (Historic Houses Trust 2003:5), Commissioner Bigge’s 1822 plan (in Baker 1965:16), and S. L. Harris’ 1824 plan (in Baker 1965:30). believed that the convicts had too much free time, In the wards they slept in hammocks slung from which they abused in robbery and drunkenness. wooden rails and beams. The work day extended He wanted convicts on government service subject more or less from dawn to dusk, with an hour’s to tighter discipline and easier mustering, so more break for lunch. Supervision within the wards was work could be obtained from them. His response was minimal, and thieving, gambling and nocturnal to create a large barracks where the men would be escapes were reported as chronic problems (Ritchie confined every night during the week, but allowed 1971:17; Select Committee 1844). to work on their own account on weekends (Hirst The Hyde Park Barracks was built to provide 1983:41–44). accommodation for convicts, not as a prison. In The Barracks complex was constructed by skilled Britain, during the later 18th and early 19th convict labour to a design specified by the convict centuries, there was significant debate about crime, architect, Francis Greenway (Figure 1.1). In laws, punishment and gaols. Penal reformers such Greenway’s original Georgian design, the compound as John Howard and Jeremy Bentham promoted comprised a central dormitory building, enclosed a new regime of punishment, directed not at the by perimeter walls with corner pavilions that physical chastisement of the criminal, but at contained both cells and guard houses. Two ranges reforming ‘the heart, the thoughts, the will, the of additional buildings flanked the northern and inclinations’ of the prisoner (Foucault 1977:16). southern perimeter walls, comprising a kitchen, The new way to discourage criminal behaviour bakery and mess, in addition to residential quarters was through punishment by confinement in prison, for the Deputy Superintendent and his family. rather than by the infliction of bodily pain. The Open sheds were later built against the eastern British government responded by building two new and western compound walls to provide additional prisons, one at Millbank, which opened in 1816, and shelter. As a reward for services, Francis Greenway’s Pentonville, which opened in 1842, while continuing conditional pardon was made absolute. with the use of hulks as floating prisons, and The Barracks was intended to house 600 convicts, transportation (Brodie et al. 2002:60, 94; Ignatieff but up to 1400 may have been accommodated there 1978:93–95). in later years (Cozens 1848). With more than 9000 While convict transportation to Australia male convicts in the colony by 1819, however, only continued throughout this period of shifting ideas a fraction were held at Hyde Park (Shaw 1966:96). about the punishment and reform of criminals, the 2 1. Introduction Hyde Park Barracks, however, was constructed place of confinement was incidental (Kerr 1988:40). with little apparent awareness of these changing J. M. Freeland (1968:40) writes that the Hyde Park penal philosophies. There were no facilities to Barracks was ‘just a barn — but a very handsome separate or isolate convicts, for example, and barn’. internal surveillance and control were also limited. Although the Hyde Park Barracks did not, Architectural historian James Semple Kerr argues and could not, function effectively as a prison, that Greenway’s barracks adapted a form used in the increasingly, in the 1830s and 1840s, it was used 18th century for a variety of domestic, agricultural as a place of secondary punishment for refractory and urban buildings and institutions (Kerr prisoners. Governor George Gipps observed in 1988:24). He also suggests that the composition 1844 that the convicts in the Barracks ‘are for and style of the Barracks was meant to embellish the most part those, who in consequence of their the urban environment, and that its function as a misbehaviour have failed to receive indulgences ... Dawes Point N Millers Point Bennelong Point Argyle Street The Rocks Sydney Cove Farm Cove Cumberland Street Sussex Street Bridge Street FGH Bent Darling Harbour Street Hunter York Street Kent Street George Street Street Government Domain Macquarie Street Woolloomooloo Bay Pitt Street RTS book Sydney Infirmary King Street depot and Dispensary The Mint Wesleyan book St James Hyde Park depot Barracks Street Street Market Street St Mary’s Elizabeth Castlereagh Hyde Park Pitt Street George Street Liverpool Street Oxford Street Hay S.C. Mission Street book stall Carter’s Barracks (Female Refuge) 0 300 m Benevolent Asylum Figure 1.2: Location of Hyde Park Barracks in relation to Sydney streets and landmarks.